The Burden Of Extra School Hours

Education has been described as the process through which individuals are made functional members of their society. It is a process through which one acquires knowledge, realises one’s potentials and uses them for self-actualisation, to be useful to oneself and others. In every  society, education connotes acquisition of something good, something worthwhile.

Education involves total transformation of a person for him/her to fit into the society. It can be acquired formally and informally.

In the formal setting, schools are established with a curriculum which in Nigeria, is prepared by the Ministry of Education. Time tables are drawn by schools to enable the teachers teach their subjects at different periods of the day during school hours.

During school hours, there are interval when pupils and students are allowed to go on break for some rest after being subjected to hours of reading and writing. After this period, they go back to their classrooms to continue with their learning. The essence of the break period is simply to allow the children’s brain to cool down for some time, to create more room for more assignments.

This has been the pattern as far as one can remember until recently when schools, especially private schools ultered the entire system. Many private schools in Nigeria today, have very tight time tables that do not provide opportunity for the children to rest. They forget that for appropriate learning to take place, the child has to be psychologically prepared with a mind at rest, without fatigue.

Many of these schools do not have playgrounds, so the children are confined to their classrooms from 8:am till whenever the school dismisses. The most worrisome aspect of it is the idea of forcing the children to stay back in school after the normal school hours all in the name of “lesson”. Parents are made to pay compulsory lesson fees whether their children will attend the lesson or not. The children are therefore mandated to stay hours longer than necessary, without considering that they are already exhausted and experiencing diminishing returns.

How can a five year old child spend seven to eight hours in the school every day? She leaves the house by 7:am and returns around 4pm, exhausted, yet with loads of home work to do? When does she have time to rest? Why suffer the children unnecessarily? What quality of pupils/students do we intend to produce through this method?

We have been crying of fallen standard of education in Nigeria, and as far as I am concerned this lack of rest, lack of siesta and over-burdening of the childrens’ brains is the root of the problem.

Some parents do not even help matters. For whatever reason some of them abandon their children in schools after school hour. Recently, I read a news letter of a   school, where the school proprietor was warning parents that failure to pick up children one hour after school closure will attract a fine. That was her own way of making parents pick up their children as soon as the school closes to enable them have enough time to rest.

It is therefore, adviceable that both Federal and States Ministries of Education should look critically into the issue of recreation in our private schools. Rest is important to a pupil/student in order to enhance his/her academic performance.

There should be adequate time for recreation in school time table. Unnecessary compulsory extension of classes for lessons should be abolished. Most importantly, there should be strict monitoring of these private schools before they turn our children into something else.

Calista Ezeaku